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Nurses Role During The Civil War Essay

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Nursing is a profession that has been around since the nineteenth century. “The first nurses began by caring for injured men during the Civil War” (Dzubak, 2016). During the Civil War, there was a tremendous amount of wounded soldiers who needed to be cared for. Since the men were fighting in the war, the Union and the Confederacy both realized the need for female nurses to care for the injured men. The purpose of this paper is to determine the beginning of nursing during the war, explore the work of the United States Sanitary Commission and the Women’s Central Association of Relief, and to explore the evolution of nurses’ roles during the war. The Civil War was the start of nursing in the United States. “Before the war, wounded individuals …show more content…

Initially the perception of nurses working by the Army was negative. “Women working in army hospitals are objects of continual evil and have a very uncertain, semi-legal position, with poor wages and little sympathy” (Robertson, 2012). Doctors and physicians described nurses as “old hags” who surround the army surgeon. Army nurses did not always have the most experience, but they saw what needed improvement and sometimes challenged the surgeons and hospital staff regarding what they viewed as cruel treatment of soldiers (Robertson, 2012). Ever since the beginning of nursing, one of the most important aspects of nursing is being a patient advocate. Female nurses may not have been accepted at the hospitals on land, female nurses were welcomed on the USSC hospital transport ships. The organizer of the ships believed that female nurses were able to provide a “home away from home” for the injured soldiers (Robertson, 2012). The nurses were “responsible for organizing food and accommodations on board, tending to soldiers’ needs, and assisting the medical staff. The doctors and nurses on the ship were caring for thousands of sick and dying

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